Decision Aid with the MCDA-RES Software: A Wind-Hydro Energy Application for an Island of the Aegean, Greece

Abstract

Energy planning refers to providing sufficient power to human societies while at the same time underlies resource, economic environmental, social and technological constraints. The complexity of the task renders multi-criteria decision analysis techniques a useful tool in the decision process. Multi-criteria decision analysis techniques offer a transparent way of elaborating on decision problems, which include many criteria and different decision-makers. This article presents the MCDA-RES multi-criteria decision-analysis software and its application in a case-study regarding a wind-hydro hybrid energy project for an island in Greece where the performance of alternatives on a set of different criteria and the preference of the decision-makers is assessed. The analysis showed that no group consensus could be directly established; still some alternatives performed better than others and a way towards a compromise solution could be revealed.

Keywords:

• MCDA-RES web-based software
• multi-criteria decision analysis
• wind-hydro project

Acknowledgments

This research has been partly financed by the European Commission, research project: “Development and Application of a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Software Tool for Renewable Energy Sources.” Acronym: MCDA-RES, Contract No: NNE5-2001-273. The usual compliments apply. The authors would also like to thank all people interviewed.